I expected the iPad to be a revolutionary device and holding it in your hands, interacting with it, really is a revolutionary experience. It’s the computer of the future.

• It’s fast!
• It’s powerful!
• It’s intuitive, responsive, easy and inviting to use
• The iPad with its multi-touch screen and single tasking is the first computer that adapts to how humans work, while other computers expect us humans to adapt to how they work
• The iPad apps I’ve tested embrace the idea of simplicity, beauty, fun and ease. Just like the iPad itself
• The iPad is the first computer I’ve used where reading really feels inviting and user friendly
• This tablet computer is wonderful for a new kind of story telling! The iPad can blur the line between reading, watching films, gaming and I can see how people could invent new ways of telling stories where images, film, audio, text and interactive experiences all blend together into a new kind of multimedia story telling
• The digital environment on an iPad feels peaceful and focused
• The touch screen is crisp and sharp and the book-size feels user friendly
• The iPad lives up to its promise of long battery life
• You need a bag and/or a slip to protect your iPad
• You need a soft, lint-free cloth to remove marks left by your fingers

The iPad and iPhone are innovative devices that bring to mind Think Different, Apple’s advertising campaign from 1997

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Now, what I’m really interested in, is how I can use this revolutionary tablet computer as a digital, portable, creative art studio! I’ll be back on Tuesday with my findings and hope to present a list of 20 outstanding creativity apps for the iPad.

Tags: apps, digital environment, ease, interface, iPad, simplicity, technology

Hi, Maria, welcome to Marmalade Moon and thank you for taking part in this interview! To begin with, could you tell us about your background? Where do you come from? What do you do for a living?

I’m an archaeologist and university professor at the University of Algarve (Southern Portugal). I was born in the capital, Lisbon, but I’ve been living in the South for the last 10 years (moved when I was 28 years old). I have strong connections to US since my “other half” is from Oregon, US.

Other than that, I’m a Mac geek. I’ve been using Macs for the last 5 years, ever since I fell in love for its design, OS and applications. (Made some switchers out of my friends, family and students… I’m quite proud of that.)

You have a technique for how you keep your desktop organized, could you tell us more about the Fluid Desktop?

I’m very visually oriented when I’m working on a computer. I like a beautiful, uncluttered, organized environment. Therefore I pay extra attention to wallpapers, icons, and organization of folders and files techniques. This means I’m always searching — online, of course — for the right image or icon. And for the most fluid way to keep my stuff organized in the hard drive.

I found out that for me what’s out of my view is normally out of my attention, so I manage to have my most used folders in my sightline. That means they must be on my desktop… but not exactly. :) Let me explain —

Currently on my desktop I have the aliases (an alias is a small file that represents a file or folder) of 6 permanent folders. They are all placed on the left side, so they don’t get mixed up with temporary files that generally end up on the right side of the desktop (see Fig. 1, of the full desktop). They are not the real folders, since the real ones are not residing on the desktop, but instead they are neighbors of the Documents Folder (example: ~/Documents, ~/Downloads, ~/Pictures, ~/New Folder…) or within the Documents (~/Documents/New Folder).

I make aliases of them so I can have easy access while still maintaining the folders in their regular place. (Note: to do that you ctrl+click the folder or file in question and then choose Make Alias. That will create the alias folder or file that you can then move wherever without changing the original item’s place. (See Fig. 2.)

Of those 6 folders, 2 of them are network connections between my MacBook Pro and my iMac (lovingly called Geekmac). Basically they are like conduits to the other computer. As long as I have the network working I can send or receive files in between the MBP and the iMac. (Think of these folders as hyperspace wormholes.)

The other 4 folders are the ones related to my classes; one for each class that I’m currently teaching (for anyone else, these could be folders related with different projects). Again these are only aliases, since the real ones live as sub-folders of the general Documents folder. In them (or in any other folder I cannot see regularly) I only put finished files; i.e., files that I am no longer using, but am already moving to their final destination.

So, where do my currently ‘in use’ files live? Or the files that I’m still to read or to finish? Well, those live in 4 other folders located in the right side of my dock (see Fig. 3).

Here I have the ordinary Downloads alias folder and 3 personal ones: Out Zone, ToDo, Work Zone. They are all aliases of the real ones living next to the Documents Folder (i.e. ~/Out Zone, ~/ToDo, ~/Work Zone). What are they for? Well, let me try to explain:

— Work Zone: every file that I’m currently working on.

— ToDo: files I’m planning to work on, but haven’t had the time to do it yet. (Normally, stuff that I downloaded or received and know I’ll have to work on later.)

— Out Zone: general stuff that I have already finished and is waiting for final destination. I normally clean up this folder every month or so, sending its contents to the other folders on the desktop, if the subject is any of my classes, or other less used folders within the Hard Drive.

In a way this is my Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow.

Now, since these 4 + 6 folders are so visible I tend to be very picky on their icons. :) The others, far from my eyes, don’t matter that much to me, since I only see them now and then when I’m organizing files. But these 4 (dock) + 6 (desktop) must be pretty and easily distinguished. On the 3 GTD folders I prefer similar shapes and different colors. The Refresh Trek icon set by Dave Brasgalla is perfect for that.

For the 4 classes icons I’m using the set Book icons by Susumu Yoshida. The 2 Geekmac icons were remade by me using a basic iMac icon (don’t remember the designer). To change the regular icons into these pretty ones I use a great app called CandyBar by The Iconfactory and Panic (shareware).

Oh, and the terrific wallpaper is from fredsarran (ICAscot.com): walldesk3. (He regularly posts his work at MacThemes.)

Could you tell us about your interest in desktop art? What sparked your interest?

I always liked digital art even if I’m not good enough to try it on my own (maybe in another lifetime). I always loved a good placed out-of-the-ordinary wallpaper… However, my real interest only started after using Macs. It’s a shame to have such beautiful hardware and not play with digital art, either web design or icons or wallpapers or…

Is your desktop always neat and newly styled or does it vary? How do you like to customize your own desktop? Do you have any favourite desktop artists?

I tend to see my laptop (more than the desktop) as my office. I’m there all the time, either working, blogging, twittering or zapping through the web. I *need* to have a good looking environment; it’s important to my mental health, therefore I keep things pretty much neat although the style varies a lot.

I’d say I change my wallpaper every 1-2 weeks and my icon set every 2-3 months. And, yes, I customize a lot, even if avoiding deep changes (for instance, I never change the OS theme).

I currently have a big collection of wallpapers (300 MBs of it in a special folder) and many icons that I regularly use (stored in CandyBar). When I see something I like in the web, I collect it and sooner or later will end up using it.

As for desktop artist I have some favorites: Vladstudio for wallpapers (and some others from DeviantArtor MacThemes… or Marmalade Moon). Louie Mantia,Anthony Piraino, Jonas Rask, David Lanham, Susumu Yoshida, Dave Brasgalla for icons.

Tell us about some of your favourite applications and their icons?

There are a few I really like and therefore never modify, like the Mailplane icon.

Because it is so easy to identify what it is for: M from mail, a plane and a G from gmail. Simple, efective, balanced. It was made by Jonas Rask, a pro. :)

Unlike Mailplane,Scrivener‘s icon was made by a non-professional designer: Amber Vaesca. She’s a pro on using Scrivener, though. :) You can see it’s less polished than the other ones, but it totally invokes the ambience of the app, which I think it’s the most amazing app for writing ever made. (My PhD was done in it. Scrivener made it less painful.)

The Espresso icon. I like the name and I like the warm feeling of it. It’s a very promising text editor for HTML and other languages. Even before it was ready to download (it’s a brand new app) I had already “stolen” its icon to prettify my desktop. :) (In my dreams I want the original file, so I can change the character as I wish.) I don’t know exactly who made the icon.

The Bean icon. The second best app for writing… It’s a freeware app similar to TextEdit but much better in features and with a nice look to it, inside and out. (TextEdit is boring, both the app and the icon.) The icon was made by Laurent Baumann and I want to eat that chocolate little bar next to the coffee.

DrawIt is my favorite application for making small works related with desktop or web design (like the calendar included in the Desktop), besides it has a very cool and simple icon. I love it because it avoids the regular mix-up of objects that most drawing application’s icons have. A colorful elegant ink drop that I can instantly spot in my dock. Plus, I love orange. This icon was also made by Laurent Baumann.

Finally, what are some of the things you enjoy in your everyday life?

Let me see… I love reading, including ebooks (both on my laptop or iPod Touch). Am currently obsessing over the end of Battlestar Galactica (damn, I’m going to miss that show). And I just bought a new bike: a Trek FX 7.6 to do Cycle Oregon 2009. In my spare time I’m working hard for that 400-mile ride in September.

Related Links:

• Maria’s Blog: Mac ao Quadrado
• Maria on Twitter: twitter/mjvalente

Maria’s Desktop:

• Wallpaper from fredsarran (ICAscot.com): walldesk3
• Icons: The Refresh Trek icon set by Dave Brasgalla and Book icons by Susumu
• Dock: Optimus (reflective) by Imageblender
• Calendar resource (in desktop) created with DrawIt by Bohemian Coding

Tags: desktop customization, interface, interviews

A wallpaper or desktop picture is the image that’s used as a background on the desktop of a computer screen as well as on cell phones and other devices.

Desktop pictures or wallpapers are part of the desktop environment, the graphical user interface and is the most high profile item on your computer. Users can customize their desktop pictures quite easily to make their computers personal by changing the image used as the background of their desktop.

In Windows this type of image is referred to as a “wallpaper” and on a Mac it’s called a “desktop picture”. These tutorials guide you through how to change your wallpaper in Windows and how to change your desktop picture on a Mac.

Wallpapers or desktop pictures are available in many different formats to fit different monitor sizes.

Fullscreen and widescreen monitors have different proportions for wallpapers. Although wallpapers can be scaled by the system, picking a size that corresponds with the resolution of your monitor ensures that there is no loss of quality caused by scaling the image.

People who use multi-monitor set-ups can use dual monitor wallpaper. These images are created especially for multi-monitor set ups. Sometimes the image will appear to continue from one monitor to the next. The image can also be reflected in the second display. There are many ways to create desktop pictures for dual monitor set ups.

In Mac OS X you can set your system to automatically change your desktop picture and pick one of the intervals offered such as every hour, every day or when waking from sleep.

Read more about the desktop environment in this article about computer icons and the desktop metaphor.

Illustrations with Pink Orchid Desktop Wallpaper, Snowy Day Wallpaper and Satsuma Sky Wallpaper.

Tags: gui, how-to, interface, tutorials

A computer icon is a pictogram or symbol that is used on computer monitors as well as on cell phones and other devices. The icon can symbolise a file, folder, application or device.

Icons are found on the desktop, in the toolbars of applications, on web sites. Software toolbars display icons such as “copy” and “paste” as icons that show the user how they can interact with the software. Icons are often used to help people navigate round web sites or to identify items such as tags and categories on blogs. Smiley icons represent moods in forums and chat programmes. Weather icons indicate the weather on news sites. The list is endless.

Icons can help make the computer experience user friendly, increasing usability, by helping the user to quickly identify what they seek or clearly show how an application or web site can be used or navigated. Users can customise their icons to increase the usability of their computer experience, making files and folders easier to find and to make their desktop personal.

Today, icons and wallpapers (or desktop pictures) are part of the desktop environment, the graphical user interface (GUI) of most modern personal computers. The desktop metaphor helps users to interact with the computer treating the display as a desktop that you can place documents on, folders that contain documents, there is drag and drop functionality and a trash can. In 1984, the original Macintosh was the first computer to abandon the use of a command line and popularise the graphical user interface that uses the desktop as a metaphor.

As the computer systems have evolved and become more refined, the operating systems have been able to display more polished computer icons with true transparency and larger sizes. In Apples current system Mac OS X Leopard the largest size is 512×512 pixels and Microsoft’s current system Vista can display icons up to 128×128 pixels. Both Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista use 16×16 pixels as the smallest size for icons. Often this is the size used for displaying items in listview.

Creating good icons is an art in itself comparable to the miniature paintings by old masters. The icon has to be original, distinctive, easy to understand and work in small sizes as well as different operating systems.

Illustration with a Royal Blue Ink folder icon from Luminous Blue Folder Icons. Browse more free icons.

Tags: folder icons, gui, how-to, interface, tutorials